Leaving Salt Lake City

by Matthew Timion

  We laughed about the chickens and just how out of place she felt. I wished I could have related but truthfully the idea of chickens sounded wonderful to me. Free eggs. I was used to my neighborhood and my neighbors with their six kids and cars parked on their lawn.

  Courtney, Manny, and l went to Snowbird, a ski resort in Utah, for the annual Oktoberfest celebration. Oktoberfest, which in most places is an excuse to drink and dance, was oddly tame in Utah. Since I had never attended an Oktoberfest in any other state, it was completely normal to me. Courtney, however, was the first to comment that “this is the most low key Oktoberfest I have ever seen." In other states people dance and drink, eating bratwurst while celebrating. In Utah it was more of a chance for people with German heritage to dress up in formal Oktoberfest garb and dance to music reminiscent of polka. There was beer too, but it was by far not the focus of the event. Their German ancestors would have been ashamed of them.

  I told Courtney about people I knew in Utah. I told her about the polyamorous couples, the swingers, the pot smokers, and the guy who drank a shot glass of his own urine every day to boost his immune system.

  “You do realized you know some of the weirdest people I have ever heard of.”

  “What do you mean?" All I had ever known were those people. As far as I knew it was normal. Tyson had been the only person to tell me otherwise.

  “This kind of thing isn’t normal, Matt. Those people are weird." This might have been the first wake up call I had ever had in regard to Mormon culture. Mormons and ex-Mormons were all that I knew. Perhaps they were not normal, like Courtney said. In Salt Lake City though, especially among the ex-Mormons, they were normal. They were often praised for their ability to fight the system or to go against the grain.

  That very night Courtney and I retired to bed. We held each other and it felt like a missing piece in me was right next to me. She was someone I could see myself with. She was a woman unlike any of the other girls I had known.

  “Marshmallllooooooow!” We heard our neighbor’s housemate yelling at around midnight.

  “Marshmallllooooooow!” He yelled again. He was looking for his dog Marshmallow.

  Courtney and I both burst into laughter. “Seriously, Matt, Utah is weird!” I had to agree.

  Despite my lack of cleanliness, my apparent weird friends, and the mellow Oktoberfest, the visit with Courtney was a success. We continued talking and started becoming a lot more serious. Despite our limited interaction, I could really see a future with her. She was very attractive, smart, and one of the funniest people I knew.

  Over time we started to fall in love. It felt like real love like love that they write about in romance novels and make teenage sitcoms about. In October of 2009 she sent me the following email.

  I was thinking today: what did I do to deserve Matt in my life? It's inconvenient, it's slightly frustrating, and so much seems unknown. But just seeing your name on my caller id makes me smile, talking to u on the phone is the favorite part of my day, and hoping(knowing) that one day we won't be so far away from each other makes it worth it.

  My emotional connection to you has been quick, unexpected, and unlike anything I've experienced in a long time.

  So to answer my own question: I really don't care what I've done to deserve you; I'm just really happy that I did it.

  I felt the same way.

  | THIRTY FIVE |

  Finality

  October 2009

  I received a letter in the mail. It was my completed and finalized divorce decree. Jessica and I were finally divorced. It was official, and I had custody.

  I don’t know what I was expecting to feel. Perhaps an official court document would have given me closure. I was officially single again. No new feelings emerged. It had been almost a year and a half since I received the phone call from Jessica and we were divorced. Finally. Everything felt the same though. It just felt normal.

  Five years of marriage, lies, fatherhood, CIA Assassins, and people throwing up blood had become a part of my identity. The effects of those experiences don’t just get wiped away with a judge's signature.

  This is the same way Mormonism still affected me even though I had removed my name from their membership records. Mormonism had defined me for so long that to completely erase it would be impossible. To discount its influence on me, even to this day, would be a disservice to the Mormon Church and myself.

  I called Courtney and gave her the good news.

  “I’m officially divorced!” I was expecting excitement.

  “Awwww,” she said. She sounded disappointed. “But I liked knowing I was sleeping with a married man." I imagined her putting on a pouty face as she said it.

  It was a running joke we had. She was dating a married guy. Now that joke would have to be put to rest. We started planning another visit for her to come out and spend some time with her new non-married boyfriend.

  Still an atheist, something had happened that made me wonder if Courtney and I were meant to be. Fifteen months prior, while still working for the radio station, I had had a psychic reading. It was the first time I had ever done such a thing. Margaret Ruth, the radio show’s resident psychic who had a weekly hour-long segment giving love advice, read my tarot cards.

  I wanted to know when I would find the one. Her answer was simple. She blurted out, “fifteen months." I was disappointed it would not be sooner. “I see you with a family and a dog and kids. You won’t meet her for fifteen months." The exactness of her prediction has always stuck with me. I was aware of the coincidence, and I always wondered if perhaps Margaret Ruth really had had some hotline to the spiritual world. The timing seemed too perfect since I was falling for Courtney. I even told her that I loved her. It was the first time I had told someone that since Jessica.

  Courtney visited over the months when she could. One night I locked my bedroom door so that we could have privacy. Manny knocked. It was after midnight. I told him to back to sleep. He yelled, “You’re just like my mom!” The next day I asked him about his outburst. He said that over the summer when he had been staying at his mom’s house, the air conditioning stopped working. Manny and Jessica then went to stay at a male friend’s house. Manny assured me this friend wasn’t Vince. “Dad, my mom locked herself in the bedroom with this guy I didn’t know. I was having a nightmare, and she wouldn’t let me in. I was scared." That poor kid. I always left my door open after that. He needed to know that he was safe.

  Money was becoming more and more of an issue. I had none. If I had had more items to sell I would have, but by this point all of my big items had been sold already to the highest bidder. In order to make up for this I had spent a lot of time that year growing my own garden. I had tomatoes, peas, onions, and everything else I could think of. The goal was to preserve them and save them for the rest of the year. At least I knew that they had been grown locally, and, most importantly, they were essentially free. Besides, it gave Manny and me a reason to go outside and work in the dirt. I would also take pears from a neighbor’s tree while walking back from Manny’s school. Free fruit. I took what I could get.

  One day I came home from work at lunch to eat. I was riding my bicycle to and from work in order to save money on gas. I tried to do everything I could to save money. I opened the door to find that my house had been ransacked. Drawers were opened and items were tossed all around the house. Someone had been in my house. Who? Part of me thought Jessica or one of her goons had done it, even though I knew thinking like this was irrational.

  I called the police and they sent out a Crime Scene Investigator. They took pictures, took my fingerprints, and took my statement. They did the same thing for Alan as to avoid accidentally thinking we were the thieves when they found fingerprints.

  I couldn’t live like that. I didn’t feel safe in my own house. I needed a solution. I needed a dog. Yes, a dog! People never could have broken into my house if I had had a dog in there. I needed a big, strong, loud dog. To make it even easier, Jessica had rec
ently told Manny who desperately wanted a dog “There is no way your dad will ever buy a dog. He just says stuff and doesn’t mean it." I wanted to prove to Manny that his mom was wrong.

  It was one of the least mature decisions I had made as a parent. I agreed to take in a dog just to prove to Manny that Jessica was wrong.

  We found Jojo, an emaciated red nosed pit bull at a local pet store. The cost? Free. She had been rescued from the street not too long before. She was ten months old and extremely timid. Manny was in love and was so happy to have that dog in our lives. My cats were not as happy, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happy cat before. Before Jojo, Manny had had nightmares around three times a week about “bad guys” coming to get him. He would run into my bed and sleep with me. After Jojo, his midnight trips to my bedroom turned into once a month. Soon afterwards the behavior stopped altogether. Our new dog had a real purpose.

  It was getting colder out, and I was unable to ride my bike to work any more. I didn't have much money or food. I had received a letter from the Utah Foster Agency saying that they were having their yearly free day at an amusement park for current and former foster families. I saw this as an opportunity to get free food and free entertainment for Manny for the day. I started looking for events like this because I could not afford to do much else for Manny’s development besides rent movies or take the dog for a walk.

  We walked in the amusement park, in the bitter cold, and took our place in line. The warm chili filled me up. Manny was less interested in the food and more interested in the rides outside. We were walking around and saw bumper boats, which Manny was too young to ride on, at least by himself. Just then I heard someone yell my name. “Matt! Manny!” We looked over and there was Ariel. I had secretly hoped to run into either Peter or Ariel there. I was glad one of them showed up.

  Ariel was now living with a family and was working towards being adopted. According to Ariel’s foster father, Ariel and Peter lived together for a short while, but the two of them were too much to handle. They were both sent away. At least I wasn’t alone in being overwhelmed with those kids. By this point Peter was fifteen years old and had decided for himself that he could do better on his own. He kept running away from his foster homes and always ended up at his grandmother’s house. The three siblings had been removed from their grandmother’s care originally by the state. Eventually, because of his tendency to run, the state found Peter a home so far away he wasn't able to run away again.

  Ariel’s foster father and I talked and exchanged information. We planned on visiting and keeping Manny and Ariel in touch. We both agreed that Peter might not be the best influence on the kids, at least not initially.

  A short while after reconnecting with Ariel, my water was shut off due to non-payment. I had started to juggle bills in order to get them paid, but this usually meant I was always behind on a bill or two. Alan had stopped paying rent because of his own financial situation, and I was left to pay all of the bills myself. With no water I needed to figure something out. Luckily I was able to pull together the thirty dollars needed to ensure my son would be able to bathe that night.

  Jessica had still sent no child support. She called no more frequently than once a month. Manny was happy, and he had no idea his dad was broke. He didn’t even know what being broke meant.

  I started looking for new jobs, a process that could take a while. Making so little money was unacceptable. I needed to stop hemorrhaging money every month.

  It was Thanksgiving of 2009. My friend Nadia was putting on a big Thanksgiving for her friends and family. Manny and I were invited. It was free food,my favorite part, and all of my good friends would be there. Courtney sent me a text message that day. “I am thankful for you,” it said. Surrounded by friends, I only wished Courtney lived closer. I hated the feeling of loving someone so far away and going to bed at night with no one by my side.

  | THIRTY SIX |

  Trying to Find a Way Out

  Winter 2009

  I started applying for jobs every day. I had to change my situation. I had to make more money. I could see a trend and knew the longer I stayed at my job, the faster I would be completely broke and possibly lose my house. I couldn’t be homeless with a child. I had stayed so long at that job because of how flexible they were with Manny’s schedule. Counting down to my impending financial demise, I would have taken any job that paid more. Anything would have been better regardless of the schedule.

  For Christmas I had managed to save enough money to get Manny a number of presents. Christmas that year was just he and me at the house. I would have preferred to travel down to Las Vegas, where my mother had recently relocated, to spend Christmas with my family. Unfortunately it was Jessica’s year for Christmas, and she would be coming to town to pick up Manny and spend Christmas with her family in Utah. I made the mistake of telling Manny that his mother would be coming. She never came. He started to learn that anxiously waiting for her would not make her magically appear.

  I knew exactly how he felt. When my parents divorced, I was thirteen years old. My father stayed at a friend’s house for a while, but before he left he told me that he was going to take me to a concert coming into town. It was going to be my first real rock concert. ZZ Top was coming to the Moline, Illinois, and I was thrilled. Mostly I was finally going to be doing something with my dad. I put on my best Grateful Dead t-shirt and waited. We had not heard from my dad for a week, but there was no way he would forget about me. I sat. I waited. I waited for hours before my mom told me that there was a good chance my dad wasn’t coming. We didn’t even know how to get ahold of him.

  I found out later that my father had taken his new girlfriend to the concert. My father’s priorities were obvious. My father never apologized for forgetting about me. He never mentioned it. I never mentioned it either. Like my father, Jessica never acknowledged that she was supposed to come into town. She never apologized to Manny. She never apologized to me.

  My video camera was one of the items stolen from my house. I had a long tradition of filming my son on Christmas when he opened presents. I did this mostly because there is almost zero film of my childhood. I didn’t want Manny to grow up without a record of his past, with no funny videos to show his own children. My video camera was gone. I rummaged through the basement and found an old VHS camcorder that I had been bringing with me from house to house for years. It was missing a power adapter, but I figured out a way to to jerry-rig one out of two other power adapters I had had. Although it would be on VHS, I could film Manny’s Christmas. At least it wasn’t reel-to-reel.

  Faced with the fact that I had to use a fifteen-year-old video camera to record my son’s Christmas, I was motivated yet again to get a better job. Anything that paid more would do. I saw a job online to be a recruiter. Recruiters are those annoying people that call you and ask you if you’re looking for a new job. They then get you the interview and if you get hired their company makes twenty percent of your first year’s salary. It’s a terribly lucrative business. With my knowledge in technology and my bachelor’s degree in psychology, I thought I had the right combination of skills required to do the job. I applied.

  New Years came and went. I kept the house at sixty-five degrees in order to save money on heating. Warm air escaped through the sixty year old windows in the basement. We made up for the loss of heat with small space heaters in our rooms, which were still ridiculously cold.

  Jojo, our dog, slept in my bed. Sometimes she would sleep on the couches themselves, which had been mended with needle and thread over a dozen times to repair the tears she had created while “digging” for crumbs of food left behind by Manny. I couldn’t afford to buy new couches. I couldn’t even afford to pay my gas bill some months. Our dog was a money pit. My son loved her though. He adored his dog, even when he would sometimes wrestle with her and get hurt.

  After being tired of constantly having to mend my furniture and clean up after a dog too stubborn to house train, I decided to try to ken
nel train her. This process of kennel training involves leaving the dog in a small kennel all day so they won’t go to the bathroom. They are supposed to hold in their natural urges until they are let out of the cage. Apparently dogs don’t like to lay where they waste. Jojo was the exception. Not only did she go to the bathroom in her kennel, but she would then lay in it and when I let her out of the kennel she would spread it all over the house. Eventually our dog figured out how to break out of her kennel. Since the kennel could not keep her in, I tried to give her a room in the basement. It was an abandoned bedroom that used to be Jessica’s room. I figured Jojo could do whatever she wanted in there and at least the mess would be localized. Still not content being locked up, Jojo tore a hole in the door and escaped. If it wasn’t for the love my son had for that dog I would have gotten rid of her right then and there.

  My house was chaotic and owning a dog cost more than I had anticipated. I kept applying for jobs.

  My roommate Alan still wasn’t paying rent. It had been four or five months by this point, which had really taken its toll on my ability to do much of anything. Although we never talked about it, I know he had had his reasons for his lack of payment. He would avoid me like the plague and come in and out of the basement without saying a word to me. There was a door to the basement in my kitchen that always stayed closed. I only heard him coming and going as he never opened the door any longer. I only opened the door when I had to do laundry since the washer and dryer were in the basement. If I went down to the basement his room would be closed. It was like a stranger was living downstairs. This behavior went on for a few months.